Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, in a CNN town hall Wednesday night, stood by the city’s sanctuary policies and repeated his demand that federal immigration agents leave the city.
Frey’s comments come as state, local and federal officials look for ways to tamp down tensions in the wake of the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two US citizens who lived in Minneapolis.
Frey spoke on Monday with President Donald Trump, who then appeared to soften his comments on the mayor and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. But Trump’s tone changed Wednesday, when he said the mayor is “playing with fire” by insisting local police won’t play a role in enforcing federal immigration laws.
Here are three early takeaways from CNN’s ongoing town hall:
Frey said he had a “productive” and “collegial” conversation with Trump on Monday. But didn’t back down at all Wednesday night from his demand that federal immigration agents leave Minneapolis.
“I’m saying the same things now that I said then,” he said.
Frey had two specific demands. First, he said, state officials should lead the investigations into the killings of Good and Pretti. He said he doesn’t trust a federal government that “came to a conclusion from the very beginning” that the those killings were acts of self-defense and that Good and Pretti were domestic terrorists.
He also said he wanted the federal operation that has seen thousands of immigration agents swarm the Twin Cities in recent weeks come to a rapid conclusion. Frey told the audience he said as much in a meeting with Trump border czar Tom Homan, who the president sent to Minnesota this week to oversee the administration’s efforts there in an attempt to ease tensions in the wake of Pretti’s killing.
Frey said a meeting between Homan and state and local officials didn’t end with a commitment to ending the federal effort “on any given timeline.”
“But,” he said, “there was a general consensus that the present status needs to change.”
He said he hopes that the number of agents in Minnesota will be drawn down, and the violent clashes between federal agents and local observers will end.
“But again, I’ll believe it when I see it,” Frey said.
Trump on Wednesday attacked Frey on social media, saying the third-term Democratic mayor was “playing with fire” after Frey said Tuesday that Minneapolis would not change its sanctuary policies and would not help enforce federal immigration laws.
But Frey insisted Wednesday night that the city and its police “are going to do our jobs, not the federal government’s jobs.”
“I want our police spending time protecting the residents of our city — stopping homicides and carjackings; making sure violent offenders are investigated and held accountable,” he said.
“I don’t want them spending a single second hunting down a father who just dropped his kids off at daycare, is about to go work a 12-hour shift, and happens to be from Ecuador,” Frey said. “That guy? He makes our city a better place. We’re proud to have him in Minneapolis.”
He explained the city’s sanctuary policies, saying Minneapolis officials want undocumented immigrants to feel like they can call 911 when necessary without fearing deportation. He called those policies “a safety strategy.”
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara was sharply critical of federal immigration agents’ tactics in the city, saying that viral social media videos of encounters between those agents and local observers “show a lot of methods that are questionable and tactics that just do not appear safe — for agents or community.”
He said Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents’ approach “looks like policing 20 or 30 years ago,” and said those agents often did not appear to be working “in a coordinated way.”
O’Hara also sought to contrast federal immigration agents’ approach with Minneapolis police. He said in the city, local law enforcement has been “placing a very strong emphasis on trying to deescalate situations whenever possible.”
“That means we try to slow things down. We try to calm the situation, and not unnecessarily escalate things,” he said.